How Color Affects Emotions: A VR Experience
Contributors: Matthew Trager, @Jriosdel, Sheida Rashidi Ardestani, Andrew Nguyen
Link to prototype: https://anguyen6262.github.io/Red/
Disclaimer: To run this program on iPhone please download google chrome or Firefox.
Overview
Emotions are a significant part of human existence and can be elicited by a range of internal or external factors. Often emotions are grouped into six primary categories: happiness, anger, fear, surprise, sadness, and disgust. However, there are more complex emotions that individuals can experience. This is where virtual reality (VR) comes into the picture. VR can help us create an immersive simulation where users can engage with computer-generated environments and 3D models. VR is perfect for immersive experiences, and we believe that it is a perfect medium to explore emotion.
This current project is a follow-up to our previous design sprint, which explored emotions in VR from the perspective of a color-blind person (you can find it here). This time, we are focusing on how an environment’s color can impact someone’s emotions. This is a crucial question because certain colors are sometimes associated with specific emotions. For instance, red is linked to emotions like anger or passion, blue to relaxation or sadness, and yellow and green to happiness or friendliness. So we investigated how altering the colors of a VR environment affects the user’s emotional response. The final project is a 3D environment with two rooms–a “danger” and “calm” room. However, the user is able to change the color and lighting in each of these rooms. This was to see how the different colors affected the user’s emotional experience. This project is the final one for our HCI class, and we have outlined the steps we took to achieve our objective below.
Design Process
- Ideation and Project Goal
This project builds upon our previous work in human-computer interaction. Our initial project focused on examining the relationship between color and emotions, and we created a virtual room themed around the color red. Given our positive experience using A-Frame, an open-source framework for developing virtual reality environments, we decided to further develop the concept. We started by creating sketches to guide the design of our new VR environment. Our aim was to explore different ways of evoking emotions through virtual reality. Initially, we planned to create seven different rooms, each representing a different color of the rainbow. Alternatively, we considered creating a single museum-like room that would adapt its contents based on the color chosen by the user.
To explore the effect of color on user experience, we decided to create two rooms, one with a “tense” theme and the other with a “calm” theme. Our professor Lauren Milne suggested that users should be able to change the color of both rooms to understand how the user’s experience would be influenced by the color of the room, regardless of its original theme. For instance, would changing the color of the calm room to red make it feel scary? Ultimately, we chose to implement this approach to our project.
In the initial stage of the project, we focused on exploring the two environments we had and figuring out the most effective color schemes to convey the intended emotions to the user. We had a “danger room” from our previous iteration of the project, which heavily featured the color red. Additionally, we created a “calm room” designed to evoke feelings of safety and relaxation. When brainstorming ideas for the calming experience, we gravitated towards natural elements, such as greens and blues.
However, we realized that the emotional response to a color can differ depending on the environment it’s in. For instance, the color red can represent both fear and love. We believed that by allowing users to change the overall color of the calm and danger rooms, we could elicit intriguing emotional reactions. Our goal was to let users experience various emotions in both rooms by altering the color. For example, a yellow sun in a blue sky might create a calming effect, but if the sun and sky were to turn red, it would evoke an entirely different feeling.
- Red: Anger, embarrassment, passion, or lust.
- Blue: Shyness, sadness, or calmness.
- Yellow: Cowardice, happiness, or caution.
- Green: Disgust, envy, friendliness, or greed.
- Purple: Pride, fear, or courage.
- Orange: Energy, optimism or enthusiasm.
- Prototyping
We started with some preliminary sketches of how we wanted the environment to look. We wanted to start in some liminal portal room where the user could learn how to navigate the environment, pick the colors, and choose the room to enter. The color changer, we decided, would be placed in between the two portals for ease of access.
After completing our sketches, we utilized 3D models from Sketchfab to create the assets for our virtual reality environments. In this project, we explored how different combinations of assets and colors could evoke different emotions in users. We created two environments: a danger room and a calm room.
- The danger room was similar to our previous project, but we had to adjust the lighting to allow for color changes.
- For the calm room, we chose a wilderness theme with birds chirping and wildlife sounds to promote a calming atmosphere. However, we acknowledged that wilderness environments could also be perceived as hostile, so we aimed to test how color changes would affect the user’s emotional experience.
- The portal room, where users could change colors, was designed to be neutral and liminal, like a space environment. In each environment, we utilized different assets and models to achieve the desired emotional effect.
- Movement
Our initial plan was to create a fully immersive VR experience for the users, but we encountered a navigation problem when we tried to implement it using the Google Cardboard VR headset. The headset does not support conventional controls or keyboard input, which makes it challenging for users to move around the environment. To overcome this challenge, we came up with a unique solution of using circular “telepads” placed on the ground. By staring at a telepad for a few seconds, the user’s position would change to the location of the telepad, allowing them to move around the environment without traditional controls.
However, our telepad system was not perfect, as we discovered during user testing. It was sometimes challenging to stare at a telepad if it was too far away, and if the telepads were too close together, the user could accidentally activate the wrong one. To address these issues, we experimented with the placement of the telepads and the time required to activate them. Although our movement system was not ideal, we were able to come up with an innovative solution to a unique problem.
- Individual Rooms
In this section, we will discuss the design process for the individual rooms in our project.
- Main room
To provide an immersive introduction to the experience, we designed a space-themed liminal area with an alien aesthetic, which includes a color picker and two doors. This neutral environment establishes a baseline mood for the user.
We encountered problems with loading and crashes due to the heavy assets we used to design the room, which we solved by replacing them with smaller models and redesigning the space. However, we also faced limitations in A-Frame when creating different environments, which required resizing and redesigning. We suggest rendering the entire 3D environment as one asset and implementing it into A-Frame to streamline the design process and provide more control over file loading.
Our user tests revealed that the main room needed improvements to serve as an effective introduction. Despite adding an instruction panel, users were confused about navigating the space, and the panel was text-heavy and non-intuitive, which led to further confusion. We moved the instructions to the back of the environment and made the starting camera face them, so users begin by looking at the instructions away from the portal and color picker before turning around to start exploring. This change was helpful, and after shortening the instructions about movement, we believe that the main room provides an excellent introduction to the experience.
- Danger room
Our main focus here was to create a room that would evoke the emotion of fear, and with heavy emphasis on the color red. We brainstormed ideas and decided to incorporate an alarm clock, a spider, red lighting, and an exit room. These were all models we had considered during the first brainstorming session. Luckily, free versions were available. This room ended up being very similar to the original version from our previous HCI project.
One issue we encountered in user testing was that the main attraction–a spider jump scare–was very difficult to trigger. The user needed to locate the clock, interact with the clock, then realize that they should interact with the clock again. Only then would the spider come out and “frighten” the player. Because of this, many players missed out on what we considered to be a highlight of the experience. That being said, the ambiance of the room was sufficient to create a tense feeling in the user. It did its job, but there was some room for improvement.
- Calm room
The calm room was fully realized as a calming woodland experience. We included a campfire, blue sky, cute a-frame house, and an animated fox. The fox, we thought, would provide some variation when the color the environment changed. Foxes are predators, but also very cute. So depending on its presentation, a fox could be perceived very differently. Users ended up loving the fox model. A similar thought process made us include a lone house. It was a very peaceful model, but a single house in the middle of the woods could also be perceived as threatening.
In user testing, we found that many players wanted more freedom in the calm room. There were limited places to teleport and had few things to interact with. Users assumed that the open feeling environment meant they had more control, but this was not the case. Many users lamented that they could not play with the fox or enter the house. Perhaps in the future we could add more interaction and movement, or alternatively we could make the woods feel like a more closed environment.
- User Testing — General Notes and Method
Once we resolved the technical issues with our project, we conducted user testing to evaluate the emotional experience based on the color of the room.
We provided our users with a Google Cardboard VR headset, but for those who experienced nausea, we also offered a laptop version. We offered little guidance on how to use the controls, and some users found it difficult to figure out the control scheme. While experienced VR users adapted quickly, others found it challenging, especially those who were familiar with video games that use WASD controls. We believe that our solution to movement was relatively successful, but we may have been overly ambitious with the controls and environment.
The users explored the environment for approximately 5–10 minutes and were asked to share any emotions they experienced, highlight colors that they thought suited the rooms well, and provide general feedback. At the end of the test, we gave them a short form to complete to obtain an overall impression of their experience.
We tested the program on six users, and the results of our final user test are summarized in the next section.
- User Test
Users had varying emotional experiences depending on the color of the room.
- In the danger room, red was found to be particularly effective in creating an intimidating atmosphere, while yellow and green made the room less threatening and even comical. Purple and red still managed to make users feel unnerved, even though they didn’t produce the same level of fear as red. Some colors were deemed unsuitable for certain rooms, with orange and purple thought to make the room look unattractive or like a rave.
- For the calm room, users generally felt calm when exploring it with yellow, green, and blue colors. However, when the room was red, they reported feeling uneasy and anxious. Users also experienced different emotions with mixed colors like purple and orange, with some finding it “trippy” and “psychedelic.” If the color combinations clashed, users tended to leave the room quickly and adjust the color to find a better fit.
- Post Analysis
Upon analyzing the results, we found that they generally aligned with our expectations. We were glad to see that the colors had such a significant impact on the user’s experience, and the colors reported by players were consistent with established color theory.
However, it was challenging to collect data for this experiment since there were numerous colors and directions the users could take, and we had limited guidance for data collection. As a result, we received more generalized responses, and many users did not feel the need to test every color combination, which would have been time-consuming.
Interestingly, users tended to enjoy experimenting with color combinations more in the calm room due to its open and exploratory nature. Overall, we are pleased with our results, which demonstrate how different colors can affect the user’s experience.
Final Reflection
In the future, we plan to continue exploring this project using better technology, such as creating a version for the Oculus. This would allow us to overcome some of the issues we encountered, such as control and loading problems. Looking back, we may have been too ambitious in our approach, which made it difficult to conduct extensive user testing. In retrospect, using a Wizard of Oz prototype for early-stage testing could have been beneficial.
Despite these challenges, we are still satisfied with the outcomes of the project. We enjoyed using A-Frame to create a project we are proud of, and we were able to conduct an experiment to explore how colors influence emotions. By using VR, we were able to simulate real-life experiences and observe how colors in the environment impact human emotions.
